Engineering Degree Program in China - Solar Energy

1. Introduction

Solar energy is the heat radiation energy of the sun and the performance is solar ray. In modern society, solar energy is often used for power generation or providing energy for water heater. There are two ways for utilization of solar energy, solar energy conversion and photoelectric conversion. Solar power generation is a new renewable energy. Solar power includes wind energy, chemical energy, water energy and etc in broad sense. 

2. Main Categories

1). Photovoltaic: photovoltaic panel component is a kind of power generation device which is exposed to the sunlight and can generate direct current, which is composed of almost all the solid photovoltaic cells made of semiconductor materials (such as silicon).

2). Solar thermal: the modern solar thermal technology will be sun polymerization, and use of its energy to produce hot water, steam and electricity.

3. Advantages

1). Universal: Sun shines the earth without any geographical restrictions, either on land or sea, mountains or islands. Solar energy can be directly developed and utilized, easy to collect, and has no exploitation and transportation.

2). Harmless: the development and utilization of solar energy will not pollute the environment. It is one of the cleanest energy, and it is extremely valuable for today's serious environmental pollution situation.

3). Huge: the solar radiation that reaches the earth's surface every year is equal to 130 trillion tons of coal, and it is the largest source of energy that can be developed in today world in total amount.

4). Longinquity: according to estimates of the rate of nuclear energy produced by the sun, the amount of hydrogen storage enough sustain billions of years, and the life of the earth about billions of year. In this sense, it can be said that solar energy is inexhaustible.

4. Application Area

1) Solar thermal utilization: the basic principle of solar thermal utilization is that the solar radiation can be collected and converted into heat energy through the interaction with matter;

2) Power utilization: using heat energy generated by solar radiation for power generation and solar radiation can be directly converted into electrical energy by using the photovoltaic effect;

3)  Photochemical reaction: including photosynthesis, photo chemical action, photosensitive chemical action and photo decomposition reaction;

4) Fuel utilization

5. Derivative Products

Solar collector, solar water heating systems, space-heating, solar electrical energy generation, solar wireless monitoring